Pavlina: Life is Not For the Living

Surfing through Flickr, I found myself! It’s what I wore to the Dancing in the Gears ball. Enjoy.

Steampunk!

I’m on the far right, in case you didn’t realize…:)

P

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Now for the obligatory Balticon 43 wrap up, anticipated and expected. Memorial day weekend saw me, once again, at the lovely Hunt Valley Marriott attending Balticon, the area’s largest science fiction convention, run by the Baltimore Science Fiction Society. Now…

The Good

Where to begin. It was great seeing folks I met last year, meeting new people this year, and meeting some of my favorite authors and podcasters. The panels I attended were FANTASTIC! Only one panel I questioned why I was there. The rest were quite excellent. Highlights were: opening ceremonies, Steampunk Ball, Science programme, meeting the FDO, costumes (mine), Volunteering (con suite), launch party (JC Hutchins/Christiana Ellis), New Media party (more talking, meeting and greeting), the Singularity.

Wow, so much goodness! First the people! I met SO MANY new people, it was awesome! If you’re here because I gave you one of my wee cards, HELLO! I love you! Drop you name in the comments or email me, I would love to hear from you again! I don’t remember anyone’s name! I met some great people during my volunteering as well. I met great people walking around, I met great people dancing at the Steampunk ball, I met great people in the bathroom, I met great people in the dealer’s room, I met great people in the lobby, I met great people outside, I met great people at the panels. Listen, I met some great people this weekend! Hello!

I met the FDO! Scott Sigler himself. He was the nicest person ever! I hope I am spared when he becomes the FDO. I managed to corner him for almost an hour in the Con Suite during the Meet the GOH thing and nobody else wanted to talk to him! What is up with that! It was kinda hidden though, and being a volunteer I knew ALL ABOUT IT! W00T!

I also met PG Holyfield. You know him as the author of Murder at Avedon Hill, which I talked all about in this earlier post. He was also super duper nice.

Then there was JC hutchins, and if you go by the massive amount of evidence, I was stalking him!

I wasn’t really stalking him, but as usual I didn’t take many photos, but I ended up with four of him. Go figure. He was also super duper nice and so easy to talk to.

This was one of my favorites. I took this during his reading and he was really into the story and bringing it alive for us all.

I just cannot talk about all the good I was involved with. There was too much of it. I do want to talk about my costume. I loved the steampunk and I am sorry I never got a decent picture of it. I’ll have to put it on and have Jason take some pictures. There should be plenty of pictures of it on the interwebs because I had dozens of request for have my photos taken, and you can just see the top of it in the photo of me and JC above. You’ll have to excuse the lunatic smile on my face. I was exhausted and it was like 12:30 am and I hadn’t gotten much sleep in the days/nights previous.

The Bad

The worst thing was that I never got anything like enough sleep or enough to eat. I calculate that between Thursday AM and Monday AM, I got ~22 hours of sleep (I usually get at least 36 hours), spent a total of ~7 waking hours at home with the family, and ate a total of four full meals, mostly on Thursday and Friday, I never did eat (anything of consequence)on Sat or Sunday and it got to the point that on Sunday I was unable to regulate my body temperature, I was freezing and went to the Con Suite where my new friends injected me with treats and goodies. Very stupid and I am old enough to know better. When you get that little sleep, you MUST eat!

My pirate wench costume. Actually in the picture above, the top looks really good. I hope that’s what it really looked like. I wasn’t very happy with this costume, I did find the big full skirt very comfy but i think it was too big and poofy and the costume seemed unbalanced. I spent the longest time on this costume and I am upset that I was so unhappy with it. I made the top, the scarf and the sash myself, and they seemed to turn out well. Of course, you can’t see much in the photo. Oh well, you can’t win them all, right?

I also, for the second year running, never did get a chance to talk to Mur Lafferty. This is my own fault. Every time I saw her she looked really busy and rushing around, I didn’t want to “bother” her. Oh well, nothing like missed opportunity. Maybe next year.

The Ugly

Not so much of this. The entire Con was great, and even the stuff I listed above in The Bad, wasn’t bad so much more like unfortunate. I was snubbed by an author. Listen, I am a fan. I went out and purchased your book. Then I have logged many an hour listening to your stories. Then I try to talk to you at the con and you can barely drag up the interest to respond to my questions, well excuse the #@%$%out of me for daring to bother you during a FAN convention. Maybe I’ll just take your book, shred it, mail it back to you with a big #%@$% off written on the envelope! I’ll probably just send him an email letting him know the depth of my dissatisfaction. Then if he is a jerk I may well do as I said. There is just no reason to be rude to a fan. If it wasn’t for people like me he would be nothing!

So, there you have it. Balticon 43. We’ll see you at Balticon 44.

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Balticon is in two days! Are you ready? If you are traveling, do you have your bags packed? reservations secured? Are your costumes ready? Your t-shirts washed? Do you have your comfortable footwear? Yes? Great. I’ll see you there.

The Pocket Programis up! I have already planned my schedule and it is full. Needles to say, on Friday the big events I’ll be at are the Opening Ceremonies, the Dancing in the Gears Ball, and a few panels. On Saturday I’ll be at the Scott Sigler autograph session (with my Contagious book), lots of panels, the Con suite where I shall be volunteering, then on Sunday I’ll be at Singularity!, the Scott Sigler Autograph session if I was denied the day before, and the Nina Kimberly the Merciless/Personal Effects Dark Arts book launches, then on Monday I hope to go to the Scott Sigler Kaffleklatche, then say a tearful goodbye to all my new and old friends. I didn’t list the panels I plan on going to, as things change and who knows what will happen.

The costumes are DONE. Let me say again, the costumes are done! I plan on being in costume Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday. On Monday I’ll be in my civvies. This will be my first con in costume, though I have been is costume before, just not at a con. Does that make sense? And for those of you who won’t be at Balticon 43, do not worry. I’ll post pictures of me wearing them. I showed them to Jason last night and he was……okay with them.

So tonight, I have karate with Martin, then rest. I’ll try and watch the last episode of BSG. Then tomorrow I’ll go to the Con hotel and help out with some basic set-up, then Friday morning I’ll be there to help with the Con Suite set-up, then the Con will begin! Yippeee!!!

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Well, that’s a bit misleading. I’m still wearing makeup. Oh my, yes. I can’t live without it. Really. What I really mean is no more BUYING makeup. I mean how many shades of “brown” eyeshadow do I need? Especially when I can go a week wearing an eye look with three shades, never repeating a shade, and no-one but me would ever notice the difference. What’s the point? Good enough comes to mind. The quantity of makeup I now have is good enough. There are a few caveats, of course.

The problem is I AM ADDICTED TO MAKEUP. It’s not as destructive as being addicted to drugs, alcohol, WoW, candy, or sex. It is still hard on my checkbook. I would like to stop the madness, and use all that money to buy other stuff. Stuff like more video games , more costume supplies , take some dancing lessons (time allowing), buy an e-book reader….

To make sure that I shalt not be tempted I have unsubscribed from all emails from the beauty offenders (MAC, Clinique, Beaty.com, etc) and I have also unsubscribed via my RSS reader all the beauty crack websites. Goodbye Temptalia! See you (much) later Beautyful Sentiment! Adios Palacinka! Au Revior Makeup Bag! There was no WAY I could see the porn put up by Temptalia and not be tempted ! The worst part of all, those were only FOUR of the sites I was reading. There had to have been close to a dozen purely makeup porn sites there, each churning out multiple posts per day! I had to say no! I kept my subscription to just two, Musings of a Muse, because she collects mainly Japanese cosmetics which are next to impossible to get easily here in the good ole US of A. It’s a lot harder and costlier for me to buy Japanese exclusives than MAC which is freely available. She also has quite different coloring than I as well, so when she does buy something widely available, it would look terrible on me and I am not tempted. I do like her blog though, and she is a Sci-Fi lover and gamer like I am so I still read it. The other one I stayed with was Blogdorf Goodman as that team of bloggers is also multi-modal. They are as likely to talk about clothes and perfume as makeup. They also have showcase segments where they may show their entire collection of red lipsticks for example. That kind of porn I can handle. I have an entire collection of red lipstick that I can compare with.

What I cannot bear is lots of beautiful new pictures of the latest MAC, Chanel, YSL or Lancome releases. If you aren’t aware, cosmetic company can have up to 4-12 launches PER YEAR! Yes, annually dahhhhling. So, even if I were to buy one or two things from each company for a few launches, you can see it all adds up rather quickly. I have had this habit of never bothered to add up the sum totals of my cosmetic spending, but the evidence is right there in my many makeup drawers.

I have a lot of makeup.

So the rules are:

I shalt not purchase any of the following:
1. Lipstick
2. Lipgloss
3. lipliner
4. lipstain
5. lipsheer
6. blush
7. bronzer
8. “beauty” powder
9. face powder
10. highlighter
11. eyeshadow, be it pot, creme, liquid, etc.,
12. eye liner, be it pencil, cake, gel, kohl, etc.

That’s quite a lot, isn’t it? Now onto…

Things I may buy when the one I am using run’s out:
1. Concealer (believe it or not, I have only two which I use daily)
2. Mascara (Hey, you’re meant to use it for 3-6 months only!)
3. Foundation (It’s my crack)
4. lip balm
5. skin care (a must)

I think I actually have enough mascaras in my hidey hole that I can get close to a year without having to replace. Typically I use mineral foundation, but every now and then I use liquid. I am hoping I can use up all these tubes and bottles of liquid foundation I have lying about, so I will really try not to but any more foundation. Skin care is not makeup! I am amazingly streamlined on my skincare purchase. Mainly because this would take away from the bottom line on what I could spend on makeup.

So I started last week, this is week two. I’ll start a new category for this and you can track my progress here. Of course, if you don’t care then don’t read the posts.

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This make me so mad!!!

The page at Super Eco is naked fear mongering. I lurk at Super Eco mostly to see the other side and know thy enemy. Not like I am all for the raping of the environment and eating plastic, but I realize in a modern society a balance must be sought. I am a chemist and I fully believe in “better living through Chemistry.” I don’t need to present a dissertation of how and why chemistry has helped out humanity, but please realize you would not be reading this blog right now without Chemistry!

If you visit the link above, you will read the offending post and you can also read my comment (response). The Eco-nazis need to decide which is worse, the artificial additives or the “natural” additives. I have some good friends that are natural products organic chemists, and they will tell you that sometimes, “artificial” is better than “natural”.

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TEN days peeps! Are your costumes ready? Mine almost are. I have to put a few finishing touches on the shirt (duct tape), and find a skirt (hopefully in a drawer somewhere), then hope my Forever 21 (fantastic steampunk stuff there, quite surprising) arrives in time (next Friday) and then I’ll be all set. Oh yeah, I have to find some shoes somewhere in my closet(s). That’s a lot of hoping, and we all know what happens when you over-hope……

I went to the Balticon/BSFS business meeting on Saturday. The great news is that Balticon is shaping up rather nicely. I am donating quite a bit of my time, I’ll be helping to stuff registration packets on Thursday, helping get the Con Suite set up on Friday. Then I’ll have to find a bathroom to get ready for Dancing in the Gears on Friday night. Then back to the Con on Saturday to fill in for the Con suite on Sat afternoon, then time for myself. A bit of Con suite time on Sunday, then free time. Monday AM there is lots I know I want to do, but I’ll be around to help tear down the con suite. The con is really shaping up quite nicely and it was quite exciting to hear all the “behind the scene” stuff. The only bad news is the programming schedule is not up yet, but hopefully in another day or two so keep checking the site. I thought about helping out with Registration a bit also, we’ll see.

So, if you are going to Balticon, stop by the Con suite and say hello. I’ll be the only Pavlina there.

I’ll post pics of the costumes as they are completed, hopefully a few days before May 22.

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is finished! It was a great listen, with many talented voice actors/actresses. It was richly narrated and the work that went into describing and bringing to life such a rich and vivid world was not minimal. The last story I was so impressed with was The Corridor and I must admit that Murder at Avedon Hill was better executed. I’ll add a new category to the sidebar of things not to be missed. Murder at Avedon Hill is the work of P.G. Holyfield and you must go to his site and check it out, info is on the sidebar. Now, what else can I say about this novel/work of art? It was riveting, and the characters were so full of life, they really did exist in my mind. The background and the mythology of the world was finely developed and both plot and character development were spot on. This should be a guide of what to do for any new writer. You want an awesome plot and you want awesome characters, this novel had them both! Kudos, PG.

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So I said lastly I probably wouldn’t go to the steampunk ball at Balticon 43. Well, I think I changed my mind. I love the steampunk and the thougtht of going to a BALL with like minded peeps gives me the shivers! wowza! I already said one of the main reasons I didn’t want to go was lack of an outfit. I still have the lack of an outfit, but as I was creating a blouse recently that had some corset-like construction I unearthed a couple of corsets I happen to have in my drawer. (I know, I know, but I actually used to wear the, out in public!). SO then my little brain got to thinking. Then I went to Polyvore. What? You don’t know the awesomeness of Polyvore! Well, please go there, right now.

Steampunk look by Pavlina20 featuring Forever21 necklaces

So, there is the outfit I assembled. the majority of it can be purchased for ~100 USD from Forever 21, a shop I usually only buy scarves from. I already have the corset, and I will try and find shoes in my wardrobe. So, what do you think? Is is thumbs up or thumbs down?

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Used to be, air travel was a beautiful thing. It was a luxury, one would get dressed up to go to the airport. Waiting in the lounge, then boarding the plane. It was all very elegant and relaxing.

Fast forward to now…sitting in the Charlotte Douglas airport. Bloody airport so crowded I am sitting in an abandoned gate area. People everywhere. I had to all but disrobe to go through security. Okay, take shoes off, remover baggy of liquids/gels, take laptop out of case. Put everything in trays and on belt. Wait, hoping they don’t ask me to take off my suit jacket. Then pass under the arch, then picking up my laptop, baggy, shoes, wallet, purse, messenger bag, run to an empty bench. Begin to put things away, shoes on to realize left roller bag on belt. Run back, get roller bag, luckily no-one steals my stuff whilst back is turned. Go back to stuff, continue putting things back in pockets, etc and put shoes on. Then find closest ladies restroom, and change from suit into comfy pants and flats. Keep fancy shirt on because it is pretty and I like it. This is all done whilst balancing on one foot as to not actually contact restroom floor with bare skin of feet. Then leave stall and realize scalp is killing me from the fancy up-do, so remove all one hundred bobby pins and put pigtail in. Then find this seat after cruising through a bookstore carrying nothing that interested me or I had not already read.

Phew.

Can you imagine one of those hatted and gloved women from the 50s/60s going to the airport today? The removing of gloves and shoes. Then metal detector would go crazy from the garters/undergarments. They would be subject to all horrors of searching. Air travel is simply awful these days. I cannot stand it. The stupid lines. The ridiculous baggies. Why do I have to take my shoes off and laptop out? Why? Then it occurs to me I never had to dump my water out, as the x-ray cannot see through my stainless steel bottle, can it? I don’t think so. The only good thing about flying is that I will get home sooner than I could drive. Charlotte is about a 7-8 hour drive from my house, and I wouldn’t have left until 4pm, I’d say so I would be getting home at midnight. This way I get to suffer the indignities of flying, but I’ll be home no later than 8pm. I guess that I worth the four hours.

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well, another year passes me by.

Tags:   me!2 Comments